There is conventionally known the following method as a method for recognizing a status of use of a device present at home from a remote location using the Internet.
The device present in the house stores data indicating a status of the device in a storage memory included in the device. Whenever a free-space capacity of this storage memory is zero or at predetermined timing, the device is connected to the Internet by a dial-up access, and the data indicating the status of the device is transmitted to a server through the Internet.
According to such a method, each device has to mount therein a storage memory and to further include a dial-up circuit. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-218188 discloses such a technique.
An device status management method for a conventional remote control system will be described below.
FIG. 10 shows a system configuration of a conventional remote controller.
A terminal device 10 which enables a user to view a WEB screen through the Internet, such as a personal computer (PC) or a cellular telephone, is connected to the Internet 100. “WEB” is an abbreviation of World Wide Web, and “WEB screen” means information described in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or the like and displayed. A server 50 which serves as a remote controller and devices 60a, 60b, and 60c serving as remote-controlled devices communicable with the server 50 through a telephone line 110 are connected to the Internet 100.
If the device 60a is a recording and reproducing device and when the user issues a recording command or a reproducing command to the device 60a, a status of the device 60a is changed. The changed status of the device is recorded, as device status data, in a predetermined recording medium within the device 60a, and then transmitted to the server 50 at predetermined timing. The device 60a is connected to the server 50 by the dial-up access.
The server 50 collects and stores the device status data transmitted from the device 60a. In this way, after the device status data is successively and temporarily stored in the device 60, the data is transmitted to the server 50 by the dial-up access.
When the user acquires the device state, the user requests the server 50 to transmit the device status using the terminal device 10. The server 50 transmits the device status data matching the user's request among those stored therein to the terminal device 10. The terminal device subjects the received device status data to a necessary processing such as transformation of the data into a graphic format, and then displays the resultant data.